If You Build It, They Will Come, But Only If They’re Allowed to Build More Stuff
Dave Murphy considers the proposal to extend the Green Line out to Fort Meade. The idea has some compelling promise largely because “Fort Meade is the largest job center in the state of Maryland, and it is currently unserved by transit” so that could bring some considerable benefits. But of course Fort Meade’s also a bit far away from where the Green Line currently goes, so an important question becomes whether you can make the intermediate steps into anything useful:
View Green Line Extension in a larger map.
Here I think the key thing to keep in mind is that when you’re talking about new heavy rail construction, the potential benefits can be quite large but you have to decide if you actually want to seize them. This is the area around one of the proposed stations:
If you added a Metro station there, would the local area permit the surrounding quarter mile or so developed as a fairly dense walkable community? Or would people hear about proposals to build on the green space and up-zone the built-up area and decide that would lead to too much traffic? Maybe instead they’ll want to just turn the undeveloped patch into another parking lot. That’d be no good. And the existing land use patterns around Maryland’s Green Line stations don’t inspire a ton of confidence.
15 Responses to “If You Build It, They Will Come, But Only If They’re Allowed to Build More Stuff”
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October 28th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Please see the discussion in the comments of the original post at Greater Greater Washington. Long story short: Accomplish the same thing for much less cost by upgrading MARC, since you’re operating in the existing MARC right-of-way anyway.
We really have got to get rid of this crazy notion in the DC area that Metrorail is the only good transit.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
As BeyondDC mentions, this follows the MARC’s Camden line. By upgrading the MARC lines to make them more transit-friendly (not just DC-Baltimore commuter-friendly) and providing some kind of transit link from the MARC Camden line to the MARC Penn line (which has a station at Odenton), you could get a lot of the same advantages without an overpriced metrorail extension. The other advantage is that the rail lines already benefit from pre-existing density around their stations.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I know for at least one of the proposed stops (and current MARC Station) — Savage — there are already plans in place for a dense, TOD development that would replace the existing surface parking lot. More info.
Also, it’s worth noting that because of BRAC and Cyber Command, Ft. Meade is only slated to grow as an employment center.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I used to live in Greenbelt.
Instead of the Greenbelt Station, it would have been nice if the Metro had built a station in Greenbelt.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Ugh, all of this makes me angry. The DC area gets a nice transit upgrade? Why? Oh, because the surveillance state is enormous and growing. When I was last in DC, last winter, I was disgusted by the fifteen or so cranes over the district and Alexandria, right in the depths of the recession elsewhere. The stimulus is great and all, but the Imperial City controls more and more of our lives!
And the change of administration hasn’t redirected much, if any, of that from the domestic security apparatus and assorted uniformed and plainclothes thugs, plus the well-connected nabobs of finance, toward, say, poor people in need. If there’s been any benefit to the latter, it’s only at the expense of a disproportionate share going to the usual suspects.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Marshall, all these sycophants will tell you to do is clap louder. They really do think that Obama is the last decent man in this world, and that if only he knew their plight, surely he would save them.
Fools, all of them.
October 28th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
“Oh, because the surveillance state is enormous and growing. When I was last in DC, last winter, I was disgusted by the fifteen or so cranes over the district and Alexandria, right in the depths of the recession elsewhere. The stimulus is great and all, but the Imperial City controls more and more of our lives!”
Marshall, you fervently want to believe in the nonsense the Founding Fathers spun you – that the capital of a massive nation wouldn’t become a great imperial city. The Founding Fathers were either wrong or were blowing smoke up your ass. Instead of opposing the creation of the Imperial capital (a useless opposition anyway), we need to make Roma Americana beautiful and noble. Or, conversely, we should have just left the capital in New York.
October 28th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
There are two problems with this proposal:
1) It’s completely unclear to me whether the security establishment at Fort Meade would allow a rail station anywhere near their facility. Point to the Pentagon all you like; that was built in a different era
2) Such a line wouldn’t help get any of the people from Anne Arundel or Howard counties to Fort Meade (which is where I’m pretty sure the highest concentrations of workers there live).
Sounds like a vanity project that no one has thought through to me.
October 28th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
James Robertson, you are absolutely right on both points.
BeyondDC, I commuted from the Berwyn Heights Marc station on the Camden Line, and it was a flat-out joy to do so. We had an at-grade crossing right in the middle of the neighborhood 5-7 minutes from all our houses. There was limited service, but the riders mostly knew each other and the conductors as well.
When Metro came along the right-of-way, the crossing was closed and replaced with a concrete overpass (true story: I once found horse doodie right in the middle of that bridge), and the Marc stops changed to coincide with Metro Stations: one up at Greenbelt, one at College Park.
Basically, Metro ruined the 1950s style commute for everyone in that neighborhood. I don’t know anyone else who complains about that, but I hated it.
October 28th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Matt, that location (Muirkirk @ US1) is not very residential or green – it’s a light industrial park on the west side of US1 (UPS has its Metro DC distrbution center in there) and a concrete plant on the barren east side. I don’t think this would be a NIMBY zoning challenge at all.
October 28th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
[...] Meade (which, one imagines, would be a step toward its eventually extension to BWI). Matt has some good comments on the plan: [T]he key thing to keep in mind is that when you’re talking about new heavy rail [...]
October 28th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
The ride from Branch Avenue to Greenbelt is already 50 minutes. While I doubt few passengers ride the whole way I still doubt the merit of adding another 16 miles to the trip.
October 28th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Ft. Meade already run shuttle buses to the Odenton MARC station for employees who take the commuter train from DC or Baltimore. It’s really too far from DC for the Metro, making it extremely uneconomical.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:04 am
As it turns out, I live right up the road to the East on Muirkirk from the proposed station AND I work at Ft. Meade. I echo previous commenters – this isn’t a residential area, nothing but light industry for 1/2 a mile. It’s already right on a MARC station, so upgrading that might be better.
All I ever use the Greenline for is on the weekends. Drive down 295 from Laurel, get on 495 and stay in the exit lane, go to Greenbelt station (which really isn’t near Greenbelt), park in near empty lot.
I’m dubious however, about extending the line all the way to Ft. Meade. Almost everyone who works there lives anywhere BUT SW of it in the direction of DC. Maybe that’s because there isn’t much public transit there, but I’m one of the few people who work there who lives in PG county. On the other hand, it would make it easier to get to DC from up north.
October 29th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Just did an analysis of Prince George’s poor use of TOD:
http://dc.thecityfix.com/prince-georges-county-plan-envisions-transit-expansion/